Size-dependent competitive effect between surface recombination and self-heat on efficiency droop for 250 nm AlGaN-based DUV LEDs

In this work, electrical and optical performances for 250 nm AlGaN-based flip-chip deep ultraviolet light emitting diodes (DUV LEDs) with different chip sizes are studied. Reduced chip size helps increase the light extraction efficiency (LEE) with the cost of increased surface nonradiative recombination. Nevertheless, a thin p-Al_0.67-0Ga_0.33-1N layer of 10 nm can manage current distribution while suppressing surface recombination and reducing light absorption simultaneously, which results in the increased optical power density. Thanks to the better current management and reduced optical self-absorption effect, the reduced Joule heating effect suppresses the thermal droop of the optical power density for a small DUV LED chip. We also find that the p-Al_0.67-0Ga_0.33-1N layer thickness shows very significant impact on device resistance especially for the small DUV LED chip, such that the device resistance has a remarkable increase when the p-Al_0.67-0Ga_0.33-1N layer is thickened to 100 nm.